Report: Amazon Importing More Foreign Workers to Take Coveted Tech Industry Jobs than Facebook, Google Combined

Amazon, the multinational online retail conglomerate, is importing more foreign workers to the United States to take coveted tech industry jobs than Facebook and Google combined.

Every year, more than 100,000 foreign workers are brought to the U.S. on the H-1B visa and are allowed to stay for up to six years. There are about 650,000 H-1B visa foreign workers in the U.S. at any given moment. Americans are often laid off in the process and forced to train their foreign replacements, as highlighted by Breitbart News.

Data reported by Statista reveals that Amazon requested to import 2,515 foreign H-1B workers in 2017, more than the 720 foreign workers that Facebook asked for and the 1,213 foreign workers Google has attempted to bring to the U.S.

In 2017, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Intel, and Apple all requested more foreign workers to take U.S. jobs than the year before. In 2016, Amazon was one of the top 20 corporations demanding foreign workers to take jobs.

As Breitbart News reported, tech conglomerates like Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple hide their H-1B foreign worker hires through outsourcing firms like Cognizant, Tata, and Infosys. The practice allows the corporations to claim they are not undercutting or replacing American workers at extraordinary rates, as they simply contract the foreign workers through the outsourcing firms.

Meanwhile, the H-1B visa program and importation of foreign workers has crowded out American young people and STEM graduates from high-paying jobs in Silicon Valley, the tech hub of the world, Breitbart News reported.

Data analyzed by the Seattle Times revealed that 71 percent of tech workers in Silicon Valley are foreign-born, while the tech industry in the San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward area is made up of 50 percent foreign-born tech workers.

Though not specified in the analysis, a wide number of the tech industry’s foreign tech workers are imported to the United States through the H-1B visa, which brings more than 100,000 foreign workers to the U.S. every year.

Oftentimes, importing a foreign worker on the H-1B visa is the first step in a multinational corporations’ effort to outsource the American job, as the foreign worker arrives in the U.S., is trained in the job, and then is eventually sent back overseas with the job.

The growing foreign-born population dominating the workforce in Silicon Valley comes as nearly 500,000 Americans graduate in the STEM fields every year. Those American graduates are forced to compete with a booming foreign-born population in the U.S. and foreign workers who are imported by outsourcing firms and major tech conglomerates.

The foreign-born population in Silicon Valley is likely heavily weighted and biased to male Indian nationals, as they make up nearly 70 percent of all imported foreign workers on the H-1B visa, as cited by the Center for Immigration Studies.